


Feed Among the Lilies

by willowbilly



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Touching, Developing Relationship(s), F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 18:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11742654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: James, Thomas, Miranda, and their dæmons. Together in London. Before the fall.





	Feed Among the Lilies

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Song of Solomon. Because naturally.

James McGraw had been cautioned beforehand to expect the oddity of Lord Hamilton's dæmon, had been told it was some little species of exotic desert deer, endemic to the Holy Land no less, and a buck to boot.

Despite the slurs others would bestow upon James due to his humble origins he is not so uncouth as to gawk at every unusual dæmon which crosses his path, but he still can't help following Astraea's gaze and glancing down to furtively take the dæmon's measure the moment Lord Hamilton first turns his back, studying his infantile delicacy, the shockingly frail-looking legs and the slender, graceful neck, the elegant sweep of his slim, ribbed horns, the wide ears splaying out almost to as great a length on either side, and the small, sweet head with its stripes of creamy white edged below with brown running along either cheek and over the enormous, beautiful, wide-set eyes gazing forthrightly into James' own, deep and dark and placid as lakes at midnight, studying James and Astraea in turn.

So this is a gazelle. He is much smaller than James would have expected, his shoulder not quite waist-high, petite to the point where it is difficult to believe that this is what a real specimen would look like fully grown. That he has not merely taken the form of a fawn with a very premature rack.

As the lord draws ahead his dæmon gives a sprightly start and seems almost to spring to his side with just a flash of his long, spindly limbs, dainty cloven hooves tripping into a light, playful clip on the flagstone steps, and James is struck by how flawlessly he seems to hold within the very fineness of his make both the fresh, wild innocence abundantly natural to the most unspoiled of youth, and some ancient, exalted manner of biblical timelessness, an uncompromisingly divine kindness which goes far beyond James' ken.

He sees this suggestion of kindness acted out by the lord later, over and over, in the way he's taken aback and reflexively averts his eyes from the thrashing body of the executed pirate even as his gazelle watches impassively, unblinking, until the man chokes out his last breath and his dæmon disintegrates into nonexistence amidst the rabble's jeers; sees it in the insistence with which the lord charms the unfortunates into accepting the extra bit of coin and courtesy; the way he addresses street urchins with as much respect as he does nobles with land and titles to their names. Even so James would have been tempted to believe it all a performance, for certainly he sees in Thomas Hamilton that self-awareness inescapable to one who has heard often enough the rumors of messianic madness spread by detractors of his philanthropy, although it is an awareness matched by an unconcern so blithe and confident that it tips almost all the way over into willful ignorance once more.

And yet. The gazelle is always watching, alert and calm and somber, his lithe, energetic loveliness tempered by the aching poise of deep, sorrowful insight. He watches, stands witness, even when Thomas himself seems as if he cannot bear to. Enigmatic duality giving lie to one illusion even as truth is lent to another.

 

~~~

 

Lady Hamilton's dæmon, Pio, is a lean greyhound with a long, narrow, intelligent face and a very short, sleek coat of pale fawn. He makes an excellent complement to her husband's dæmon, Tristram; an animal of a long, streamlined frame, deep-chested and trim-waisted, towering protectively beside one of neat, spare, more compact lines, varying washed-out shades of dust and sunlight weaving comfortably together. One alone appears beyond graceful. In tandem they are apparitions of perfection which move with such incomparable refinement that even the minutest shift of their shapes in space seems to fulfill the choreography of some well-rehearsed dance, the sort which inspires poets to comparisons of gently drifting summer rain clouds or of overgrown grasses waving in the breeze, of waves on sand.

Pio is tall enough that whenever he presses alongside Tris he tends to take the liberty of lowering his head atop the gazelle's, slipping his muzzle down to rest between Tris' black horns. Tris, for his part, holds himself a little higher and falls still but for his breathing, so as to better make the fit, and James can always tell the precise moment that the dæmons' breathing synchronizes, their flanks expanding and contracting and their bodies subsequently sliding incrementally closer with every sigh, Tris' guilelessly wide, ever-vigilant eyes gradually easing shut, trusting Pio to keep watch for him.

Astraea always averts her gaze and moves closer to James when this occurs, as if for reassurance. For some reason it seems to bother her more the more it happens. He does his best to ignore her.

It is at one such time, when the monotony of Thomas and James' latest long session of work has been interrupted by a welcome visit by the lady and the Hamiltons' dæmons have immediately glided towards each other as if to arrange themselves so, that Pio pauses and turns, his neck draped crosswise over Tris', his warm brown eyes seeking out Astraea where she stands on the sturdy perch so thoughtfully provided by their hosts. He says, “You may join us, if you like.”

It is Astraea's reaction, the way she abruptly straightens to her full, lanky-legged height in attention and adjusts the dark, massive cape of her wings with an awkward ruffle and rustle, bringing them in tight to her sides, which distracts James from the pleasantries he was paying Lady Hamilton and causes him to sieve his recent memory for Pio's words, previously so politely disregarded. It startles him to come to the realization that Pio was, in fact, addressing Astraea after all, and his conversation with Lady Hamilton lapses as he joins Astraea in her incredulity.

Casually acknowledging and interacting with others' dæmons is more a custom of the lower class, and a habit he's worked hard to be rid of; as such he checks himself and carefully continues to ignore them now, even as it means abandoning Astraea to formulate some decent reply on her own. Even though this is the first time that any gentlewoman's dæmon, or indeed any dæmon of anyone of such higher birth than himself— besides Hennessy, with all his paternal guidance— has ever bothered to speak to her.

United, James and Astraea have barely enough tact to sufficiently bumble their way through basic courteous interaction. He tries not to betray his dread at what Godawful behavior will reveal itself to be the best that one of them on their own is capable of scraping together in the face of unforeseen circumstances.

Tris has followed Pio's gaze, patiently observing. Thomas himself has surreptitiously turned opposite, slipping back into his trance of study as he scans over the loose treatise papers fanned over the table, his hands braced against the tabletop and Lady Hamilton's hand resting on his lower arm much as her dæmon rests against his. She's facing James, watching the events play out with a disconcertingly knowing aura.

“No, I couldn't possibly,” Astraea finally says into the silence, and she sounds less flustered than she does... yearning. Which is certainly no better.

He wants to hiss a rebuke to her for the blatant longing in her tone, wants to tell her to keep herself in line and to conduct herself with a little more dignity, but Lady Hamilton is smiling at him as if she can see the play of his thoughts in his head, her eyes flicking coyly between her dæmon and his, and James dares not risk it.

Astraea's strong, chalk-white feet clench in embarrassment, lightly scaled skin sliding dryly over the flex of her bony joints, the padded wood creaking. James fights a grimace as the long, deadly hooks of her gleaming black talons dimple the leather.

Thomas, coming out of his scholarly haze and late to notice the subtler goings-on, glances around at all of them in bemusement and inexplicably appears to find something of an explanation in the curve of his wife's lips and the deliberate prick of Tris' ear, for he gains a smile of his own to echo Lady Hamilton's as he pivots at her side to mirror her posture, the both of them bright and benign and yet with the sweet, heady glimmer of some obvious secret begging to burst forth, savored on the hidden pillows of their silver tongues. James' own feels thick and ungainly in his mouth.

James has been warned that they are duplicitous people, and by all rights he should remain on guard.

He does not care to.

Thomas actually chuckles when Astraea meets his eyes as fiercely and haughtily and lingeringly nonplussed as only a raptor can be, and it is such a disarmingly lovely sound that she immediately discards all the proud composure she'd just managed to gather and swivels away to preen busily beneath her wing, her hot yellow glare in its bandit stripe of brown ducked and hidden with telling alacrity within the downiest and snowiest of her feathers.

 

~~~

 

At night he sits at his writing desk and stumbles through the Spanish edition of _Don Quixote_ gifted him, the candles guttering in the draft and bleeding profuse streams of oily smoke, stinging at his tired eyes.

“We should sleep,” he muses aloud, an absent mumble. It will be another early morning, which will inevitably lead to another late night. Another frustrating, exhausting, _exhilarating_ cycle of arguing with Thomas and trying to bring his radical ideas down to earth as they pore over the gritty particulars of their ambitious plan for a faraway island. Another eternity of wondering why he cannot help but smile at Thomas' more sarcastic quips, or why he so avidly stares at the precise, painterly gestures of Thomas' hands, watching for the fine knobs of his wristbones beneath the spray of his lace cuffs as they ride up during an exceptionally heated debate.

“You might dream of them again,” Astraea says in perverse encouragement.

“That isn't a good thing.”

“I miss them,” she continues, a wayward, headstrong piece of his soul speaking too honestly to him in the quiet gloom. “Whenever we aren't with them I miss them. I want to fly to them. To wherever they are, I want to fly. It isn't right that we are dirtbound.” That _she_ is “dirtbound,” she means. Stuck here with him and all his numerous limitations.

He leans back in his chair and imagines he can feel the shape of her wings in the knotted weave of muscle in his shoulders and back, the ragged, hungry scream of her pinions trapped in the suffocating stretch of meat. But they are as separate as they are tied together. Alone as they are accompanied.

“Hush,” he says, closing the book with a soft but decisive snap. It does not do for them to indulge in such dangerous fantasies. Any fantasy.

She sighs sharply, a judgmental whistle of air through her nares, and he flexes his hands at the sound, his own brutally blunt commoner's fists, breaking the scabs crusted over knuckles so recently split open upon the priggish faces of his fellow Navy officers when they had fucking _dared_ insult the Hamiltons' honor.

Astraea's furious shriek still rings in his ears. It had been ferocious, inhuman. Barely even dæmon.

Animal.

 

~~~

 

The morning that Lady Hamilton— _Miranda_ _—_ arrives at his doorstep after he's scarcely rubbed the blur of sleep from his vision and pulled on the bare minimum of clothing to preserve his modesty, perfectly gowned and coiffed and made up with makeup and smelling so sublimely of fresh flowers and rice powder that it goes straight to his head and dizzies him just as drink would, Astraea falls right the fuck off her makeshift perch at the foot of his bed.

It does not help that Pio slides around James and Miranda to gain egress and heads over to see if Astraea's unharmed. Mostly it does not help because rather than perturbing her further, Pio's proximity seems to have the opposite effect. Much as Miranda herself has so compelling an effect upon James.

Not very much later he is grateful that their dæmons are of a size to fit fully hidden within the carriage proper with them rather than being relegated to some glorified and none-too-private cart, for he can only imagine what would be betrayed by the way that Astraea finally stretches forward to nibble the small, pert fold of Pio's ear with utmost delicacy, her cruelly curved obsidian beak gently tweaking perked cartilage with teasing intent. James is glad that there is no one to witness how Pio ducks his slender canine head and blindly thrusts it beneath Astraea's wing like an overlarge fledgling gleefully seeking unneeded shelter while Miranda lifts her skirts over James' lap in a consummation far less chaste, the quarters close enough that they must be careful to keep their garments arrayed as barriers between the accidental touch of dæmon and skin, the terrifying thrill of the possibility crackling like static electricity with every shift of silk and linen even as they so scrupulously avoid it.

 

~~~

 

Astraea and Tris have begun to speak with each other whenever Thomas and James are engaged, invariably eloping to a convenient corner of the room and conversing in an intimately hushed conference as if they are the only two beings in existence. Astraea always remains far enough away from Tris to keep up a veneer of professional distance, but only just, acting almost as she does when she must keep herself apart from Pio in front of witnesses for respectability's sake.

She stubbornly refuses to tell James what they say to each other whenever he later asks. She says he already knows.

 

~~~

 

James stands tense and resolute in the silence following the grudging retreat of Alfred Hamilton from the dining room, from his own house, from the presence of a brilliant and unappreciated son the likes of whom James knows to be incomparably superior in every conceivable way to that odious, ugly, small-minded wretch of a man who was so undeservedly fortunate enough to sire him. Astraea remains in impolite place on his shoulder; she'd flown from her designated perch to him during his outburst, and her wings are still mantled protectively between Thomas and the door, her body still leaning dangerously forward, poised as if ready to launch herself out in an attack.

She blocks out that side of his sight range entirely, all stress-sleek sharp-edged bulk, every feather both knife tip and scale armor and ink-spattered parchment cobbled together into a utilitarian conglomeration of shabbily graceful rage. A weapon waiting for the word which will cut it loose. A living expression of hopeless devotion and uncertainty and... love. Terrible, tender. Even as he is only able to choke out his pledge to defend Thomas, an oath through implication which itself only implies that confession which he cannot yet articulate, Astraea cranes her head to look upon Tris, and she begins to shake as if she'll fall apart, the great, angel-crooked mass of her mottled wings trembling as she fights to hold them open, to hold herself strong and vulnerable, her white breast laid bare to them all, soft as sea foam and pathetic as a true pheasant languishing dead in a hunter's basket.

Tris watches her, his head raised high and proud and his eyes shining in comforting dark to Thomas' rapturous light, and then he looks at James, and walks to James from Thomas' side, ebony horns barely taller than the table as he stops right before them, close. So very close. Thomas is not far behind. James cannot breathe, cannot move even his chest, and Astraea is shuddering, rustling like a leafy tree in a gale, and then Tris says, “Oh,” with a faint inflection of pleasant surprise, as if he finally has the answer to a question he's been puzzling over for a long time.

And then without hesitation Tris recklessly places his perfect velvet nose beneath James' hand and air rushes into James' starved lungs and Astraea calms as if the storm has moved to envelop them all within the peace of its eye. Thomas is now the one shuddering, a gentle undulation which throws his head back, arching his throat against the fine fabric of his cravat. He sways into James, seemingly just keeping himself from clutching at him through sheer force of will, his head rocking forward so that their lips are almost aligned, his cheek mere inches from Astraea's wing, his face suspended within the craving hollow of its curved span, and even now Thomas' hands are unbearably kind, skating lightly along James' arms and shoulders, allowing James the chance to step away should he wish to.

Tristram is steadfast and solid against James' palm. An adamantly gracious warmth.

“Please,” Astraea whispers.

Thomas touches his lips to James', a revelation, hope fulfilled, and in the midst of James feeling that he is being remade into the holiest of unknown images Thomas slips a hand up to rest against James' jaw and Astraea drops her head and presses it against the flattened ridge of Thomas' knuckles, bumping him the way she does when nudging James to pet her and eliciting a brilliant, alien shock of sensation which sprints through him like a lightning strike, instantaneously, fleetingly all-consuming and already gone, but then Thomas' fingertips are buried in the ruffled feathers at the back of Astraea's neck, the contact sustained, and James is _truly_ transformed, every single fiber of his being singing in a harmonized chorus of hallowed epiphany, and he gasps into Thomas' mouth and discovers there the precise shape and taste of his deceptively saintly smile.

 

~~~

 

“Really, I couldn't be happier for you,” Miranda says, and from looking at Pio James knows that she means it, but that there is more that she is not saying, more complicated emotions with which she is wrestling, the burden of which she is sparing him from. Some of it, he can tell, is fear. It is not a thing to clearly see in her for however afraid she is, and whatever it is she is afraid of, she is brave in equal proportion. She is endurance incarnate.

He desperately does not mean to be something she must endure.

“Does this change anything between us?” he asks, and her façade cracks faintly, a spiderweb fissure as Pio leans into her side and hides in her skirts like a forlorn child. Her hand almost scrabbles for purchase on the back of his neck, his fur too short to obscure how her fingers dig into his skin.

James wonders if he would have ever noticed her distress, otherwise. No matter how freely she flouts the virtues of appearance Miranda is alarmingly adept at manipulating her own in favor of a more diplomatic sensibility when it suits her. Even to the point of subsuming her own hurt, at times. If she finds it suits herself to suit others.

He hates this as well.

“Would you like it to change?” she asks him in return, overly neutral.

“Of course not,” he says.

She stares off into the middle distance, takes in a deep breath, ribs straining against the confines of her corset, a ship's spars creaking against the pull of the sheets at full sail, and releases it just as slowly, drifting into the doldrums. Reluctantly preparing to share with him some scrap of what is actually concerning her. “I don't wish... to come between you and Thomas.”

James gives an aggressive shrug of irritation, Astraea tightening her talons in the molded blue leather of his protective shoulder pad to ride it out. She's been perched there all day, a heavy, quiet weight, and an ache has settled into the muscle, tension running up along the tendons of his neck. “That wasn't a problem for him when it was you and I,” James says. “I see no reason for it to be any more of a problem now, on this front, unless we make it one.” He pauses when Astraea tweaks his ear reprovingly and makes an effort at gentling his tone, though he feels as if he is futilely trying to hold water cupped in his bare hands, and it is dripping through the gaps between his fingers before he can carry it to someone dying of thirst right in front of him. His words end up stiff, stilted with formality. “If you would rather not continue your relationship with me because of anything that has transpired, then I would not presume to tie you down. No more than he has.”

Pio turns to face them again, Miranda's hand still on his scruff, and he says, “We love you as much as before, you know. As much as we love Thomas and Tristram.”

James blinks, at a loss, and Astraea acts on his behalf, flapping down to the floor before Pio and reaching up to him. She is so much shorter than Pio, and awkward on the ground, her feet ill-suited to flat surfaces. She looks hobbled somehow. Cautious and hamstrung on the luxurious carpet, her head and neck ridiculously long and slim above the crudely broad, odd dimensions of her torso as she goes practically up onto the tips of her four toes so as to point her beak skyward.

Pio looks between James and Astraea for a moment, and then bows his head, touching his nose to Astraea's beak before she can lose her balance. Miranda meets James' eyes, and she goes to him.

 

~~~

 

Astraea now joins Tris and Pio whenever they come together, her talons resting astride spine without piercing, her wings laid out as if they are arms draped so as to embrace. James has never known he could experience such simple happiness. Had never even dreamed he could feel such belonging. Such safety. 

Of course it cannot last.

 

~~~

 

“ _I am enraged,”_ Miranda cries, her eyes raw and red, her face a grief-stricken rictus, and Pio's hackles are bristled and his back is arched like some demonic, malformed cat's as he paces tightly about Miranda's legs in unadorned agony and he is snarling as if he's being choked to violent death, lips flecked with froth as they pull back from shining white fangs, his eyes as bloodshot as Miranda's. Peter's plump and modest little partridge dæmon cowers as if afraid of him, taken even more aback than Astraea is to see Pio in such an unhinged state, to see him as bestial as Astraea becomes in the midst of a brawl.

Pio has never before shown his teeth.

Something cold and burning and implacable settles into James' heart at this, at everything. Something ruthless.

“Look at what they've made of us,” Astraea hisses into his ear, harshly bereft, her talons slicing straight through to his skin, breaking flesh the way shovel blades break ground for a grave. The blood from the puncture wounds seeps slowly into his uniform. Staining it, ruining it further. He will be left with scars. “Look at what they've done. Look at what we must do.”

“I know,” he murmurs back, another oath born just as much of love as the one which he now must forsake so as to honor Thomas' last wish for him and Miranda. It twists like a dagger in the guts. Bile spilling to rot him from the inside out, a slow and ugly end. “I know. We shall.”

Astraea holds herself preternaturally still and silent as their vengeful purpose descends upon them, an embittered, savage, feral creature in the mere guise of an osprey dæmon, and speaks no more.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> James - Astraea: [osprey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osprey)  
> Thomas - Tristram, "Tris": [dorcas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorcas_gazelle)  
> [gazelle](http://www.arkive.org/dorcas-gazelle/gazella-dorcas/)  
> Miranda - Pio: [greyhound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhound)


End file.
